


Ghosts in the Snow

by Xyriath



Category: Marvel (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix-It, more or less, post Widow Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:06:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xyriath/pseuds/Xyriath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>BuckyNat week prompt: "Maybe it's not real, it's all inside my head"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts in the Snow

It was nice to enjoy a quiet moment, Natasha thought, between toppling corrupt leaders and retrieving sensitive information from the hands of those who would misuse it.  
  
Now, if only the moment were actually quiet.  
  
She set aside her coffee and pinched the bridge of her nose after having realized she had reread the same article three times—and still hadn't comprehended a word of it.  With a sigh, she folded the newspaper and tossed it in the trash.  While keeping up with the garbage that most of New York was consuming nowadays might sometimes be useful, she had a limited amount of time and it wasn't useful enough to take up this much of it.  
  
And while she knew she wanted to be doing other things, she wasn't entirely sure... what those things were.  
  
She _wanted_ to discover why lately, she had felt like she was forgetting something important nearly every moment she wasn't one hundred percent focused on something else.  At first it had been things like thinking she had left the stove on, or not locked her door.  But the dread in the pit of her stomach suggested something worse than that, something more urgent, as if she had committed a crime and left a glaring error at the scene, or foolishly given away one of the many cards that she kept close to her chest.  
  
Only, she was far too good for that.  So it had to be something else.  
  
She had mentioned it briefly to one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychologists after her recovery from Novokov's brainwashing, but she had assured Natasha that it was simply a side effect of having her memories twisted, then returned to her.  And she _had_ undergone all of the procedures that they had recommended, so everything should be back.  When she discussed them with the person who she trusted most, who knew her best—  
  
 _Who was that?_  
  
She felt suddenly like a record that had skipped for just a moment, then shook her head.  She still had a little time free; she would call Jessica and see if she would like to do something relaxing.  
  
—  
  
"You all right, Natasha?"  
  
She glanced up at Carol, sitting on a couch in the tower and eyeing her, a look of slight puzzlement and concern on her face.  With a quick glance at the clock and a start, Natasha realized that she had been staring towards the skyline for a good twenty minutes.  
  
"I'm fine.  I just..."  She hesitated.  "I've just been thinking.  Trying to sort things back out.  Ever since..."  
  
Carol nodded.  Natasha knew she didn't have to explain, not to her, but she didn't understand the momentary expression of pity that flickered across Carol's face.  
  
"It'll sort itself out.  All it takes is time."  
  
"Mmm."  Natasha pursed her lips slightly, turning her head back to gaze out across the New York skyline, feeling for all the world like she had been seeing a flicker out of the corner of her eye and turning her head, only to find nothing there.  
  
—  
  
It was when she was working on something that required her to dig back through her memories of the her Soviet days that she found another missing piece.  
  
Or, rather, a piece that was there and shouldn't have been.  
  
A memory of comfort, of—love?  Of something important, but with no context whatsoever.  
  
She brought it up to Fury when they had a spare moment.  He glanced over at her, half paying attention.  
  
"Probably just some residual effects of what Nobokov did t'you.  It's gonna make any memories related t'all that weird for a while."  
  
He sounded bored, uninterested, and confident in what he was saying.  
  
Natasha didn't believe a word of it.  
  
But then again...  
  
 _Maybe it's not real.  It's all inside my head._  
  
And god knew how reliable _that_ had been lately.  
  
—  
  
She wondered if the odd feeling had something to do with the dreams she occasionally had.  While she considered Steve a good friend, she didn't know why she would have those sorts of dreams about him, not with an off costume that he had never worn, or with brown hair, or with a sidearm—Steve didn't carry a gun.  And there was no reason that lately, the dreams had erred on the side of intimate, or why Steve sometimes had darker hair and darker eyes, filled with an expression that spoke of haunted loss, of things few living souls could understand.  
  
 _But you do._  
  
She jerked her head up.  But _I_ do, she corrected herself.  It sounded much more like her own voice, now.  
  
But there was something dangling around the peripherals of her consciousness.  A word.  A name?  It was important, and as it hovered on the tip of her tongue, unspoken, not understood, it evoked a sense of frustration and _loss_ that she just didn't understand.  
  
Pressing the heels of her hands into her closed eyes, she took a deep breath.  On an impulse, she reached out and snatched her phone, dialing.  
  
—  
  
She was hunched into the scarf wrapped around her neck when she heard the crunch of the footsteps in the snow behind her.  Turning, she saw Sam Wilson approaching, just as bundled up as she was.  
  
"I got here as fast as I could, Natasha.  Is everything all right?"  
  
She opened her mouth, but didn't answer immediately.  She didn't know what she wanted to say.  How to say it.  Thoughts and memories and not-memories whirled around in her head, colliding and half-forming, only to vanish moments later.  
  
And then, suddenly, her mouth seemed to know what to say for her, fueled by confusion and frustration, the words tumbling out into the freezing air, even as she had no idea what they meant.  
  
"Who the hell is Bucky?"


End file.
